David Choe London Lazarides Gallery

David Choe London Lazarides Gallery. Amazing show, and all that. It's not like a ton of people came on a thursday, but in the end, the right ones did for sure. A lot of red dots by the end of the night, and at record type prices. Yeah Bansky was there, no you can't see a photo of him. I did a little "what up and congrats" to David on video that you'll probably see later. David said he was nervous, and really I have no idea why. It was a great night for David, and he's a happy man. If you want, see Lazarides

























Here's all of the photos I uploaded.

Tate Fowler Choe

The morning of the big day, we were talking and everyone was tired, but we made it to the Tate Modern. A great place for sure, and it's a fun building.

The magical crack

Fowl the owl.

Choe

Pete Fowler

Visited Pete today at his studio. This is the head of his new figure.

$100 and a T shirt.

We're big time, among Bust mag. I guess I want to see this DVD even though it gets dissed here and there. Read the review, sounds like a passion project, and I'd see it regardless. Zines are pretty world wide, and they still live, maybe outside of these what this doc is talking about. I do like how it says, a lot of mags are going that graphic novel format. That's true and I'm not sure what to think of that. Read it here.

French!

A nice cut, and his locks of power are gone. But he doesn't need em. French is a busy dude and he lives in Croyden where Kate Moss is from. I got to visit French today at his flat, and interviewed him on camera for a slightly bigger entity. Although he's into the darkest types of metal, his place is a shared with his lady. It reeks of mutual niceness.

The trucker hat tree. There's plenty for every day of the week.

Aw cute. His neighborhood looks working class.

Nice sofa, and nice pillows. Silas. Big time.

British museum

The British Museum is a great place, it's known as the place that pillaged the planet of rare artifacts during it's reign of power. What you think could be here, is here. Parthenon, sure it's all here. Greek gods, Buddhas, buildings, gates, and just about everything. It's all there. I'm not sure which museum has the most stuff like this. Do they have more than the Getty? The cool thing is like the Getty, it's all free, except for the special exhibitions and those are sold out.

This Buddha has a relaxed sitting style. Even though it was taken from one of my Asian "brother" countries probably a century ago, it's proudly on display.

David Choe in London

The postcard will be an ebay hit. It's a bit dirty, but Dave's hands were black from paint. His show is this thursday at the Lazarides gallery. Dave's the man, I've been hearing he's sold a lot of the show already. He's rich! Tell him to give you money. The collectors are rolling in. He's also having a show at the same time at the same gallery but in their Newcastle area. London is a powerful economy. It's hard to believe and understand how it all works at first glance.

Dave on the street. I walked for hours and then lo and behold, I ran into him by luck. This art on the street is worth some dollars if you can excavate it from the wall.

Dave's pretty happy his closest friends are all here for him.

That's Paul, Dave's brother. We ate at a Moroccan place. It was pretty good and it's probably the place we'll be at when we're near the gallery in Soho.

Chinese new year banquet

Saelee Oh is moving to another country soon to do some art. We'll see what kind of art Buenos Aires will help her create. The balloon decor makes this look like a prom.

But gambling happens when it's Asian. That's cool.

Lobster, duck, pork, fried rice, soup, and Peking Duck. See my pile of chips, 2nd from the left? Black Jack.

Geoff McFetridge and Ed Fella Redcat

I took a bunch of photos of the show. I started of course with Geoff, who's amazing, and gladly I can say that I'm a fan. Strong graphics, a cover story on issue 25, and he's bent the idea of what a graphic designer is all about. He's tweaked it further than I ever thought a graphic designer can. This show is part of that.



This is Ed Fella's work. He taught Geoff at Cal Arts.

See more photos below.



Also see the hypebeast blog.

sexy beijing

Old school podcast. I don't remember ever listening to it, much less remembering it. I remember the interviewer, Anne Sophie Lowenberg (I think that's how we spell it), and maybe it was at the issue 33 Giant Robot 10 years show... I think. Sexy Beijing is China's #1 internet show. Not sure if that's true. Anyways, check it out.

iphone dump 5 George Takei, Donutman, Little Wings

George Takei talks to me on friday. Weird how I have a photo of it, right? It was fun catching up with George "sulu" Takei and it's a shame I'm missing him in London by a day, he started making a bunch of plans to be my tour guide for a day, until we realized, we'll have to catch up back here in LA. George used to live in London, and did pro theater there as well. He's in England for a Star Trek convention, of course. In this pic he was shooting a get out and vote PSA with Kelly Hu.

Tammy from Donutman. She speaks fast, moves fast, and is hyper and funny at 4am. I wonder if she burns that bright 24-7. She's a baker, and each baker there does a few things differently. There's one who makes the apple fritters as big as a tire. I pointed out that her fritters were much smaller. She seems to love donuts and told me that Jim's been baking and sometimes, admits he forgot how to make a few things. She told me that Jim the Donutman eat 4 donuts a day. Jim told me he has just 1!

Dressed for the occasion. Donutman. At 4am, only a suit and tie will do.
Actually earlier Saelee Oh and I attended a dinner that had gambling. Those photos are on my dead battery camera. I'll put up a few shots later. Strawberry donuts are actually refreshing. I'm an addict and this is the third time I've had it, since it started this season.

Little Wings went on at 1:30a

The funniest parts is when he played while the funky trailers were running. He'd start laughing when they went over the top-which was often. The sad thing is that I remember this movie trailer as a kid. This was at the Silent Movie Theater, post movie screening.

The IT thing

I sometimes respond to important points when they're brought up on my blog as comments. My opinion is that if someone is going to comment publicly on my on blog, I have the right to answer publicly on my blog. So here goes the first part, their comment:

why are you calling a person "it"? last i checked, dehumanization wasn't funny. if s/he is presenting a female gender, "her" would be more appropriate.
same goes for your more recent blog post.

This person is an "it" for many reasons.

1) We don't know if it (that person) is a male or female. What do you do then? If you think they deserve "that person". Read on.
2) Because "this person" wears a wig, that doesn't denote a male or female. It could be a disguise, denoting a "neither". "This person" may not want their gender to be known.
3) Humor sometimes is crass. But if it wasn't crass, it wouldn't be humor.
4) "This person" probably drinks and therefore drives, and therefore unleashes the worst smelling piss ever.
5) I've had two years of compassion. And if "this person" is going to dump piss in front of my house for two years (they could just pour it on the tree or something), not use a trash can not 30 feet away, litter, and possibly drinks and drives, then "IT" is an appropriate call out to me since this person is already an hourly misdemeanor offender and possibly a felon.

Evan hecox signing now at gr2

Evan Hecox

Evan Hecox tonite at GR2. I've never met him before, but like his work a lot. Let's see if he can make Mexico stand up against his Tokyo drawings. If I could draw anything like this, I'd be glad.

London Calls

I don't know if I'm dreading it or not, but I'm heading to London early next week. I hear the weather is tough. Any suggestions?

Steven Chow Giant Robot CJ7 screening posted in Filmmatters

Posted about the screening, words and pics in filmmatters.

Donutman

We do a perfect day in Giant Robot mag, and one thing is we've never done one ourselves, so if I were to have a way to start off a perfect day, it might be with the Donut Man during strawberry or peach season. Don't miss strawberry season, it's going on now.

magazines 2.0

Today I used Yahoo Live video to speak to a class in Canada. Pretty interesting how 20 people can actually login via one webcam in the class, and they can just watch it all. I took questions, and they waved a few times to the other guests who joined. In all about 40 came to this special session, and it shows what you can do with Yahoo Live!

If you join my twitter, I usually post when I'm going on.

Eric 2 - "It" 0

Called again, but you know, I'm beginning to feel bad. So today, "it" definitely dumped a fresh cup of piss on the street. You can't tell, but the splash nearest to the camera is wet. So I won, the cops came back again, made "it" drive to the same place as yesterday, about two blocks away, and I'm sure "it" will be back. It's a war and I feel bad, being like Bush to the "it". I'm not stealing oil, or hurting innocent people, but I am bullying a person with no home. The street still smells like piss, and I wonder what "it" is drinking. It's definitely not water.

Puch mopeds

Outside of gr/eats where the food honestly has been rocking lately, was these two mopeds from the later 70s or 80s. At least I think that's about the vintage on these. I've been telling people that mopeds are going to make a comeback, especially these post 76 gas crunch editions. Puch was probably the best one, then Motobecane. I remember these because, well, I ran into a curb riding one once. The probably get 150 miles to the gallon, looks cool, and has a great style about them.

The latest eco vehicle. It still run on gas, but they're also cool. Also check out the Honda Express, they had great commercials once upon a time.

piss poor

This person, I don't know if it's a man or woman (all reports is that it's a man dressed as a woman - but some say it's a woman, and some say it's a man), parks on the side of my house maybe 14 days of a month. About 2 weeks. I think it was something like 7 days in a row recently. I understand that some people are down on their luck, have no money, no where to live, and are down and out. Where do they go? There's a big tree, and it's dark, so this one person who drives a black ex-police car shows up and parks all night. When I'm outside, she'll drive right by slowly. I used to park in that spot just to take it away... She / He has been doing this for years. I've given her a pass, until tonite. I walked out to that spot where she actually was parked at 6pm, and later left to another spot 2 blocks away, and noticed the worst stench ever. Those wet marks are stains from piss. It's straight up urine. That's one thing I notice about homeless folks. Even though a trash can is just a few feet away, they'll leave their garbage out. I've given homeless folks food, and lo and behold, they'll just litter. So this person crossed the line with the piss. Sugar packet litter, I'll let go - even though this person has an entire car/home to litter in, but the piss is another story. Today I called the police to report this freak. It sucks, you give people a shot, and they literally piss on it. Street cleaning comes on thursday. Not soon enough.

Mental illness could be a part of it. Where will this "it" go? It's the eternal question. A park, the beach, who knows, it's actually sad, but worse off are the folks with no home whatsoever... I'm sure there's a long story behind how "it" became this way, and how "it's" in this situation, but if you think I'm doing the wrong thing by calling the police, then, please give me your home address where I can tell "it" to park. I paid my "it" taxes for two years.

Giant Robot 52 Albert Reyes

Today came the GR52 first load - Fed Ex. GR stores should have them for sale, and the rest of you will get them when they get delivered etc. Albert Reyes and his sister came over and he was so excited, he sat and read it on the spot. If anyone should have a cover of GR, it's Albert. When he walked out the door a random younger Asian woman was walking by, he held the magazine up like he was John Cusack in Say Anything and said, the new Giant Robot is out. She smiled and kept walking.

Rooftop - On any Sunday

Up on top of the roof of gr/eats, there's an owl. I know people who like owls, collect them, and so on. But would they want this one? It's probably super vintage. I wondered what the glass cup is all about? Sake? Was it some kind of Shinto offering?

See that metal thing? This morning we had to fix it which meant, take the whole thing off and work with it. My dad got some new bearings for it, and had to replace it. My dad estimates that this "blower" is about 50 years old. A new one might be $800, and the bearings itself were over $100. Eventually it'll have to be replaced, but for now, it works. It's also amazing how things were or are made. This blower had to be completely dissected just to change the bearings. I'm sure new ones would be made with a little more planning, even though a lot of car engines have this same problem. Need to change a gasket? It's possible it'll take all day just to reach a $5 part.

Dunk contest

Just when you think the dunk contest is tiring out and sputtering and getting no further than the And 1 invented dunks, things go a step further. Dwight Howard donned a Shaq like nickname of Superman, and threw down a dunk. He didn't even touch the rim but got high enough to throw the ball down into the rim. It was weird. He also did some crazy dunks that only a 7 footer could pull off. I still think it's pathetic that Lebron James hasn't made an appearance in the dunk contest. Kobe's done it, Vince and TMac has done it, but not Lebron. I don't really understand how he gets a pass. He's 23, and should still do it. Until then, he's not the man. He's the child.

Overgrowth previews install

One of the most eye opening pieces isn't just a piece, it's a bunch of "junk" sitting on top of the flat file. Look at the structures, the characters, the wood carvings, and all this becomes parts of art pieces. The colors and such look like Brian Rush all the way. The three in the show really put together a team effort, and I'm proud to host this at GR2. More pics will come out later.

Brian Rush and Zach Rossman making decisions.

Kate Guillen is hiding in back.

interviews

I did an interview today Breaking Trends in the Global Village™. What is this? I'm not quite sure, but I was recommended from a consul general and so forth. I do interviews many times a year and I'm not sure why I do this, but I do them. Maybe I hope in the big scheme of things it'll help out. I'm not sure. So I did this one with some kind of trend group, which frankly should pay for this, and then I'll do another one later for a student who has to write a paper. Half the time, the students tell me that publishers never reply to interview requests, except for us.

Art Shows across the board GR2, GRNY, GRSF

ART shows all around! Come see them all at Giant Robot stores in LA, SF, and NYC. You know the sites, check them out. See you at GR2, it's a hot show.

Free Filmmatters screening with Stephen Chow and Xu Jian in person

Stephen Chow and Xu Jiao in person to do a Q and A at the Giant Robot Filmmatters Free Screening. I enjoy the fact that we can put on shows like this, and have it be free for the true fans. Will you be there? Want to come?

send email to filmmatters (at) giantrobot.com

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 7:30PM
HARMONY GOLD
7655 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
Parking behind and underneath bldg
RSVP required

kozyndan on Analog Color

EPISODE 1_2ND HALF
I was interviewed for kozyndan's deal on Analog Color. People love them. Take a look, it's a new internet TV show that's pretty cool and pretty pro. They interviewed me extensively for it, which usually ends up on the cutting room floor. But they actually left it in. I appreciate that, I think. I hope I come off clean for it. Thanks Jeremy Asher Lynch. (you'll see him in the video doing the intro and outro. See the site here: analogcolor...



The first half is right here:

EPISODE 1_1ST HALF

iphone pics 4

Saw this house on Palms towards Lincoln. It's a trip how the Michelin man / Bibendum plays a role on the outside of the house. Why is that? Bib is a great characters and all, but on the outside of your house? Either way, maybe we'll be seeing more of this as the character generation grows up and starts buying homes. Frankly, do I want to put a KAWS Companion on my house... I doubt it, but maybe if he painted it.

On Abbott Kinney, there's a Smart House for the Smart Car, pretty cool concept, and it's one of those loss leader type of situations. Pay to play!

I've seen this dude around. I don't know the first thing about his bike, and how to ride it, but he asked if I wanted to try it out. I balked. The dude was a bit cocky, but if you're going to ride that, what the heck, why not?

Praxis, happy 14th birthday

gr/eats Valentines Day Special Box

Iphone pics might not give this enough props... the salmon was sooo good. Although I know that gr/eats can get trampled in the mix of the many restaurants in the area, I swear it's good food, and for the regulars who come in because they know it's a pretty solid choice, I'm glad they're conscious of it all. gr/eats isn't supposed to change the world, it's just supposed to be part of the bigger picture.

The sashimi works too. That wasabi stings powerfully. The lotus root in the middle rocks.

Almond pudding dessert. A nice touch.

Yahoo Live

Once again, I did the Yahoo Live thing. Nonstop jibber jabber. I don't know when I'll be on again, but I've been pretty good about it. Get on my Twitter if you'd like, I'll be sure to put a message in there. I'm "giantrobot1" on Twitter. I ramble non stop, and people seem to like it. Yahoo even put me on their front page. What do I talk about? I have no idea, I just start going, and I don't stop.

Donutman I hear you calling.

Strawberry season is in, and the Donutman is doing the strawberry donuts once again. It's not a long season, so I suggest you get in there and taste some. Delicious of course. 24 hours a day, they claim they won't run out of them until the season is done. It's a far trek, Glendora to be exact. Donutman



I'll be making more treks out there I hope.<